The news today is that GQL:2024, the first version of the GQL standard, has been published by ISO. GQL is a new language for graph databases, like SQL is for relational databases.

Here is the link to it on the ISO web site:

This is the culmination of work that has been going on formally within ISO since 2019 and for several years more before that in preparation. (There was even a manifesto! How can you go wrong?)

I suppose this doesn’t affect my usual work with PostgreSQL and SQL much. But having a new database language to work on in the same ISO working group that deals with SQL has definitely created new energy and injected new ideas into the process. Some of the new functionality in SQL:2023 was influenced by or intentionally shared with GQL, such as the SQL/PGQ sublanguage, and also less obvious things like this. I expect more synergies like that in the future.

Now, I wish graph database vendors good fortunes in implementing all this. 😉